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VinceButler
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Contributor

VLANs and Dell Blades

I know this is more a Dell question than a Vmware question, but I figure some of you are using the same BladeSystem as me and may be able to provide a quicker answer than Dell. We have a new M1000E BladeSystem which contains four M600 servers (each with 6 NICs) and six M6220 interconnect switches. The plan is to dedicate two of the switches to iSCSI and connect the other four switches back to our core switch, aggregating all four external links on each switch. We plan to use those four switches for the VM data network, service console and VMotion (using VLANs).

We have configured the link aggregation on the switches back to the ProCurve 5412 core switch and the link is up. We have configured all the internal switch ports as well as the LAG group to operate in trunk mode and we have created VLANs for use for service console (20) and VMotion (10). These VLANs are tagged on the internal ports as well as the LAG group uplink. On the HP, the ports that connect to the M6220 ports are configured as untagged for the default VLAN (1) and tagged for our other VLANs (10, 20). This is the same port configuration we use for some other VMware host servers which connect directly to the HP switch.

Unless I have it configured incorrectly, this scenario should let me specify the VLAN in VMware and the traffic should pass through the M6220 switches to our core switch, which then routes traffic between the VLANs.

When I install VMware on one of the blades I specify the first NIC to use for the service console. I specify VLAN ID 20 and provide static IP addressing for that subnet. When I try to ping that host from a workstation I can't reach it - keeps timing out.

Is there anyone out there with a similar configuration (Dell Blades with M6220 using VLANs) who can tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm pretty sure the VLAN configuration on the M6220s is incorrect but I can't figure out what we are doing wrong...

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9 Replies
azn2kew
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Have you look at this guide yet, if not read page #9 regarding design VLAN for Dell Blades with VMware! [http://www.bladesystems.org/elearning_center/WP/vmware_bladeservers_Dell.pdf]

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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VinceButler
Contributor
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Yes I did but it doesn't go into specifics about VLAN configurations on the M6220 switches. I'm sure that's where my problem is.

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azn2kew
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Champion

For best practice configuring VLAN for Dell Blades, read the attached guide its pretty good.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!! Regards, Stefan Nguyen VMware vExpert 2009 iGeek Systems Inc. VMware vExpert, VCP 3 & 4, VSP, VTSP, CCA, CCEA, CCNA, MCSA, EMCSE, EMCISA
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VinceButler
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Yeah, I've looked at that too and it also doesn't have specifics about VLAN config.

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ferjero989
Contributor
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funny enough i got the same issue, altho i decided to use the first 2 cards (switch a1 and a2) as console and vmotion only..

and.. well. i got the same problem.. in this case its a 5424 external switch...

got the same setup, m1000e chassis with 4 blades, 6 cards each, all 6 switches are m6220...

cant figure it out... without vlan everything works tho

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rmarul
Contributor
Contributor

I also have the same problem. The attached documentation a few posts up is great if you want an overview at 10,000 feet.

No thanks.

I've tried to put the M6220 ports into all 3 port types with no luck.

Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: These VMware communitys are obviously broke if someone can reply back with a non sense answer and be awarded points for answering it correct.

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awliste
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Has anyone gotten anywhere with this?

I'm facing this exact problem right now. I'm a Cisco guy and inherited this thing, and I can understand why folks don't use these switches. If anyone has a moment and can offer me some advice on this problem, I'd be much obliged.

My problem is specifically this: from a VM, I can 'see' traffic from the host that is on the access port (eg, broadcast traffic, NBNS stuff), but I cannot talk to that host directly - it won't respond to pings or HTTP. I can see it trying to reply (I'll see it ARP for my VM's IP) but it's like it cannot resolve layer 3 traffic. I've walked through all kinds of configs on these ports and I still cannot get this thing to cooperate. It's been incredibly frustrating.

If anyone has any thoughts, I'm all ears. All I want is for a ping to succeed from my VM, through it's portgroup, through the trunk, through the switch, to a host plugged in on an access port assigned to the same VLAN as the VM. It's driving me nuts. It's worth a six-pack from me.

Here's the relevant parts of my switch config:

console#show run
!Current Configuration:
!System Description "Powerconnect 8024, 3.1.4.5, VxWorks 6.5"
!System Software Version 3.1.4.5
!
configure
vlan database
vlan  2-1024
exit
interface vlan 40
name "iSCSI"
routing
ip address  10.0.127.215  255.255.255.0
exit
!

!

!

!
interface ethernet 1/xg3
gvrp enable
switchport mode trunk
switchport trunk allowed vlan add 40
exit

!

interface ethernet 1/xg17
gvrp enable
spanning-tree portfast
switchport access vlan 40
exit
!
interface ethernet 1/xg20
gvrp enable
spanning-tree portfast
switchport access vlan 40
exit
!

Thanks for your time and help.

- Abe

Integritas! Abe Lister Just some guy that loves to virtualize ============================== Ain't gonna lie. I like points. If what I'm saying is something useful to you, consider sliding me some points for it!
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VinceButler
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Contributor

I did resolve this problem although I don't recall exactly how - it's been too long 😕

I do know we aren't using that HP switch anymore, we went back to our Cisco 6509 core switch. The main reason for switching back was due to a recurring multicast issue with the HP which they were unable to resolve. Unfortunately I can't recal if that also fixed *this* problem, or if I figured it out before that switch happened.

In any case I have attached a copy of the config from one of my blade switches. Hopefully there is something useful in there; if not, the problem must have been on the HP side (in which case I can't help since that switch is long gone).

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pglick201110141
Contributor
Contributor

VinceButler,

Do you realize that you have multiple VLANs untagged on the same port?  This may work, but it seems undesirable.

For example, in your attached config:

switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10,20,30,40,50,60,80,90,100

The Dell documentation states that the default for "switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10" is tagged, but I don't believe this is true, because if you enter "switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10 untagged", printing the configuration gives you "switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10" and if you enter "switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10 tagged" it prints "switchport trunk allowed vlan add 10 tagged".

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